What’s Going On?

Thursday

Jan 3, 2013 at 5:20 PM

The emergency response business has been on the slow side lately in Stafford County – and that’s a good thing for residents and visitors, but it doesn’t mean nothing is going on with emergency service – there’s plenty going on. A previous post explained that one of our fire trucks mechanically came to the “end [...]

Steve Moody

The emergency response business has been on the slow side lately in Stafford County – and that’s a good thing for residents and visitors, but it doesn’t mean nothing is going on with emergency service – there’s plenty going on.

A previous post explained that one of our fire trucks mechanically came to the “end of its life.” The cost to resuscitate Brush 417 from his mechanical woes was determined to be well beyond his worth. But, we had just placed some new treads on the old fellow. So, before he went to his resting spot with the Forestry Department – we swapped his treads with some thinner ones. Firefighters performed this work at a handsome savings to taxpayers.

Brush 417′s bed with all of it’s equipment will be hoisted off tomorrow when the Forestry Department arrives to fetch him. Stafford County Emergency Service folks – along with help from Road & Bridges folks – will perform the work. And, one more thing about this – the Forestry Department will be bringing somebody with them, “Big Foot 2.” Cost to taxpayers? Zero.

The monies for this grant program are distributed completely. In other words, somebody is going to receive them. The State simply determines who. Stafford County has utilized this grant to the tune of $15,000 two years ago for Stair Chairs and $2,500 one year ago for Suction Machines.

Communications has also been a time consumer lately. Assistant Fire/EM Director Nick has been reprogramming all the county radios – County and Cities. The State sold off some of the radio spectrum in the channels with which we operate – narrowing the bandwidth of operation. This required us to reprogram all of our radios. And Nick was able to do most of this radio reprogramming at zero additional cost (beyond his wages) to taxpayers.

In the emergency management arena – we will be traveling to Clearwater with school representatives next week to address school emergency operations readiness.